In the fog of the day-long Benghazi hearing, political and pundit classes inside the Washington beltway have missed the smoking gun: Heroes died and Hillary lied.

Why so many have walked past that one and two others is that they’ve climbed on the Democratic spin wagon to repeat the same two lines over and over: the Benghazi hearing produced no new news and HRC looked totally presidential.

What’s so wrong about the first point is that maybe there was “no new news” to them, but to us real people in flyover country, the hearing produced several stunning revelations the rest of America needs to know if character and integrity still matter in a candidate for president.

Proof of the HRC/Obama Benghazi Fabrications

Within a few hours of the Benghazi atrocity, HRC emailed one or more members of her family saying it was “an al-Qaeda like attack.” Early the next day, in separate emails, she informed the Libyan president and then the Egyptian ambassador that what had happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack. In none of the three emails—which committee member Jim Jordan (R-OH) patiently detailed and blew up on the screen for all of us to see—was there any mention, hint, or reference to a video or a protest gone bad.

Yet, even before her first email around 11p that September 11, 2012, administration spin-mongers were peddling the fabricated nonsense about a video disrespectful of Islam inciting a harmless protest into violence. A few days later, at Andrews AFB, as the bodies of Stevens, Smith, Doherty, and Woods lay in flag-draped caskets nearby, Secretary Clinton specifically referred to the video and a protest, thus perpetuating the Obama administration fiction that al Qaeda was on the run less than two months before the POTUS election. Heroes died and Hillary lied.

During her husband’s administration, the embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam on August 7, 1998, were examined by other Accountability Review Boards. The cover letter to Secretary Albright said, “What is most troubling is the failure of the US government to take the necessary steps to prevent such tragedies through an unwillingness to give sustained priority and funding to security improvements.”

The Executive Overview contained this admonition: “The Secretary of State should personally review the security situation of embassy chanceries and other official premises, closing those which are highly vulnerable and threatened but for which adequate security enhancements cannot be provided…”

The official findings of those ARBs contained a haunting string of words that could have been said about Benghazi. There is, the report exposed, “a flawed process for assessing threat levels worldwide which underestimated the threat of terrorism in Nairobi, notwithstanding the Ambassador's repeated pleas.”

Ambassador Stevens was undoubtedly aware of this “flawed process” and Hillary Clinton, responsible for all of it, showed little interest in securing the lives of those Americans serving the nation on her watch. No one was held accountable by the Nairobi and Dar es Salaam Accountability Review Boards, just as no one is being held accountable for Benghazi.

HRC-Blumenthal-Stevens

What’s wrong with Mr. Blumenthal—a private citizen (cleared?)—having unparalleled access to our Secretary of State via email is that apparently, Ambassador Stevens had no such access. Yet, he was required by underlings to comment on Mr. Blumenthal’s kibitzings.

Despite repeated pleas for security upgrades over much of 2012, Stevens was held at arms length from the globetrotting Mrs. Clinton. According to her own testimony on Thursday last, she turned it all over to the “security professionals,” delegating blame to them, thus permitting rejection after rejection for security upgrades to a Benghazi outpost where other major diplomatic staffs had just departed in haste because of the danger there.

According to the emails released, Blumenthal’s voluminous musings had to have taken much of HRC’s official time. With only so many hours in a day, why she did what she did is only a guess, but now we know for certain she delegated what previous ARBs flagged to be amongst her most important responsibilities: Personally review security measures that protect our diplomats in dangerous areas.

Presidential Performance?

As to her performance during the hearing, it is understandable that Democrats and the State Media crowd sing her praises, but why would so many others croon in harmony? Sure, she appeared unflappable during an exhaustive review—and we should be everlastingly grateful to Trey Gowdy for his persistence—but then, how could she not have been?

Mrs. Clinton and her staff have had over three years to obfuscate, dodge, and prepare for the big day. That she was so remarkably composed for the hearing—in total contrast to her highly flappable persona during her last appearance—makes one wonder if people testifying before Congress shouldn’t be drug-tested first.

Hard-core lefties will support HRC no matter how much scandal stinks up the landscape, but the rest of the gang—the Low Information Voters and vacillators amongst Indies and nominal Republicans—need to understand that if we couldn’t trust HRC as Secretary of State, we cannot trust her with the lives of our men and women in uniform, immigration, foreign affairs, the futures of our children, or even, just the plain truth.

Mrs. Clinton accepted responsibility for Benghazi, whatever that means, but not only was she not “there” for Stevens, Smith, Doherty, and Woods, she has no idea what “there” means, and she won’t be “there” for us.